I Too Worry About My Farmville. MLIA.

If you've ever read My Life is Average you must have seen atleast a handful of posts regarding a certain game called Farmville. Some people's sole goal in life to reach some ultimate farmer status OR someone sick in the hospital's only request is that someone watch over their farm until they are well enough to leave the hospital to go home and tend to their virtual farm from their computer.

I thought what is this nonsense? Don't people have better things to do? Then again, I was the one sitting their reading these people's posts about this game.

Well I have finally been sucked in once again. I thought I was done with facebook gaming. Once I realized my brother's brain is bigger than mine or that he has a numberpad on his keyboard that my laptop lacks, I gave up Who Has the Biggest Brain?. Trying to beat his score became a futile goal.

I stayed away from fb all together. Over a year's worth of birthdays missed. Pokes unreturned. Events invites never opened. But then a friend told me to start a farm. Lo and behold probably the ugliest farm in the game.



My patchy, haphazardly placed crops were originally part of a plan to make some zen-like formation but I ended up being greedy and trying to plot more and more within my farm area. First it was a bit of everything, then only soybean, then only squash and now with the limited time roses costing only $20 with a selling cost of $200. What ROI! And its a limited time! I need to plant up!

I am reminded of the time I attempted to read Omnivore's Dilemma. Michael Pollan dedicated the first section of the book to industrial farming. With promised greater crop yields and better GMO technology, more farmers were solely planting corn. No longer rotating the crops like old-times but dumping tons of fertilizer to ensure growth. Tons of fertilizer that ends up in our water systems. And they aren't growing just any corn. The latest corn technology with greatest yield. It didn't matter the farmers were flooding the market with corn thus driving down prices, driving private farmers broke to sell their acres to the big corps, and forcing America to find something to with the new availability of cheap corn (hence all the mess in farm economics, ubiquitous presence of high fructose corn syrup in almost all processed foods, how we force cows and livestock to change from the diets they had eaten for centuries to the cheap available corn)- no it was a matter of pride and greed. How could they!?!

I was FURIOUS. I put that book down in a huff and never picked it up again. Perhaps ignorance is bliss? And why do spicy cheetos have to be so darn good?

Now I find myself in the shoes of one of those so-called greedy farmers. I am thrilled when a good neighbor has fertilized my farm - it ensures a perfect bunch of flowers. My limited-time roses are probably GMOs. I've given up farming anything else besides the latest money-guaranteed crop. Maybe I'm not so different. I shouldn't be so angry. We brought it on ourselves. If there's a market for it, someone will plant it.

What would Michael Pollan say?


(Sidenote: I'm now reading In Defense of Food. We'll see how that goes...)